Do you have the beginnings of cataracts? That was one of my first symptoms, while my cataracts were still very minor.

Finding the best doctors can be a challenge and sometimes we have no choice. Fate can play a role. My emergency appendectomy was done by the ER Doctor on call that night. It turned out that he was the top surgeon on the hospital staff. Fortune smiled.

On the other hand, my wisdom tooth extraction was supposed to be done by the best oral surgeon at Oak Knoll Naval Hospital. But he was playing golf that day and I got a new oral surgeon just out of internship. My right lower jaw is still numb all these many years later. Fortune frowned. Be thankful we don’t have universal healthcare……yet.

Looking forward to part III.

Then about seven years ago I was told I had the faint beginnings of cataracts in both eyes. It wasn’t a problem yet, except that when I looked at the moon at night the image was somewhat doubled. Same with glowing numbers in the dark, such as on my clock-radio. Nothing much to get excited or disturbed about, though.

I have had the same issue with double vision. The description of occurring with glowing numbers is spot on; it also happens with neon lights and that sort of thing, but also with brightly painted horizontal lines. It only seems to happen in the evening, or (oddly) when I am on an airplane. What is odd is that the second image is a fainter image, slightly below the main image. And I have the effect even when one eye is closed.
Over the years, I have been through three eye doctors, and none has been able to give me an explanation. They look at me rather strangely when I tell them that it is vertical double vision, and not horizontal, as you would get if the two eyes were not cooperating. One suggested I should get my head examined. My current doctor just left the area, and I have to find a new one, so I am going to take a copy of your post when I see the new guy.

I had a vitreous detachment about 15 years ago with a similar experience. Didn’t complicate the cataract surgery on that side.

The comments about the French health care system, I studied this back in 2008. I spent a year at Dartmouth, after I retired, studying health policy. I wrote a series of blog posts about it beginning here.

My conclusion was that France was the reform model best suited for our country. This was, of course, before Obamacare which shifted us to corporate Medicine and was not an improvement.

On double vision: I had eye surgery at age 4 and since then have had amblyopia, meaning I can’t see with both eyes at once. This prevents me from having double vision in the traditional sense. But lately, when I’m tired, I sometimes have something like it in my “dominant” eye, caused by developing cataracts. As Neo said, it mainly occurs with things that glow, like text on a computer screen (though thank heavens, not on my Kindle!) I see a kind of dim ghost image a little way above the “true” image, so it looks, for instance, as if a road has two white lines along the verge, one of them floating in the air above the other. With print, I can “correct” it by relaxing my focus a little so that the text blurs just a tad. Somehow that merges the two images and makes the text more legible. And anti-glare coating on my glasses has worked miracles, especially with driving.

Cataract surgery is in my future, getting closer lately as I’m starting to think I’m having trouble distinguishing colors, especially those with yellow in them. (In retirement, I’m focusing on a long-neglected interest in making art, so this matters.) I’m reading all these reports of “beautiful recoveries,” as well as the scary surgery tales, with close attention.